Telecom leaders protest EU network traffic regulations

Vodafone and Telefonica have used a technology conference in Spain to call for the EU to focus less on new rules for phone companies and more on Facebook and Google to reduce their dominance.

The carriers are battling so-called network neutrality proposals, championed by internet companies, that they say will hurt business and discourage new products such as driverless cars.

The proposals are meant to prevent carriers from blocking access to some websites or slowing web traffic.

“Network neutrality was invented by those who don’t want neutrality,” Telefonica chief executive Cesar Alierta said.

“All we request is a level playing field for the whole sector, not only for telcos.”

Internet companies have generally favoured stricter rules protecting the free flow of traffic on the web.

In May, Google, Facebook, and more than 100 other online firms wrote to the US Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to protect the industry against service providers who discriminate against traffic.

These internet companies have become too dominant, giving them the power to control what applications are developed and used by consumers, the carriers said.

“They’re so obsessed with us not having a market share of 40% in countries like Ireland, countries with 3m inhabitants, but they’re not concerned about a well- known company having 90% of the market in search engines,” Mr Alierta said.

Google spokesman Tom Price and Facebook spokeswoman Sally Aldous declined to comment.

Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said that the proposed rules could require carriers to treat all data flowing through their network the same, which would hurt the development of new services and applications that require a guaranteed service quality.

“Driverless cars, health solution services, this will require a lot of bandwidth and a lot of speed and no delay,” the CEO said at the conference.

“You don’t want to be in a driverless car getting to a traffic light and the network is congested.”

The carriers also emphasised the importance of being allowed to merge into fewer, larger companies in Europe where heavy competition has spurred price wars and cut into profits.

Mr Colao said that the conditions on acquisitions in Germany and Ireland, where regulators required carriers to open their networks to allow the creation of competing services, will prevent the industry from recovering.

“We need to allow consolidation, to allow the creation of bigger companies in Europe,” Mr Colao said.

“Consolidation should be seen as a positive. If I see something as positive, I don’t want a remedy, I don’t want a mitigation, I say ‘great.’”

Last year, the European Commission presented a package of reforms that were meant to unify the continent’s networks — abolishing roaming charges, making spectrum auctions more uniform and establishing so-called net neutrality guidelines.

The European Parliament, made up of representatives from the member countries, then presented its own amendments to the proposal in April.

That’s where the phone company says the laws became unreasonable.

The rules “are too restrictive and would severely impact the functioning of the mobile internet across Europe,” said Markus Reinisch, Vodafone’s director of policy.

“This would be really bad for consumers as well as the industry.”